Dark Envoy, the new RPG by the developers of Tower Time, feels like a classic case of hit-and-miss. Unfortunately, some of its problems might hold back players, at least until they’re fixed. In our Dark Envoy review, I’ll showcase how the game maintains some of the classic elements of adventure RPGs, while attempting to spice things up with tactical real-time combat and online co-op. While it has some unique features that help it stand out, its cons seem to outweigh its pros.

Taking place in a steampunk world run by mages and warriors, Dark Envoy features the story of Kaela and Malakai, two relic hunters who try to find their place and purpose in the world. The story starts with the characters completing chores for their parents and going through unimportant fights and missions while hoping for something more adventurous.

After the first few hours, a major event forces the characters into the adventure they wanted, but at a big cost. Without spoiling the story, all that can be said so far is that the event and everything before and after it feels too predictable. Even the big twists and turns in the story weren’t as exciting or, well, surprising.

As a result, the characters themselves come out a little bit bland. Malakai and Kaela have a very standard brother-sister relationship, with the former being more witty and playful while the latter is more strict and practical. On the bright side, Dark Envoy allows you to customize Kaela and Malakai when starting out. While you can’t change their features, it is possible to completely overhaul their looks.

One interesting part of the story is often having to decide between two morally ambiguous options. As it might be expected, these choices will affect character relationships, story progression, and, of course, the ending. Thus, this grants a lot of replayability to Dark Envoy, while making each playthrough feel unique.

While the story isn’t immersive, a unique pro in Dark Envoy is the extensively detailed class system. There are four main classes available (Warrior, Ranger, Engineer, Adept), and each of those classes has three unique specializations.

Additionally, for each class and specialization, you have a wide variety of passive and active skills. This ensures the possibility of creating a build that suits your playstyle completely. Overall, even if you have four Warriors in your squad, each of them can have a completely different build. From a durable tank and a classic swordsman to an assassin or a ranged DPS unit, there are many options to choose from. And all that from the Warrior class alone; imagine going through the other three classes.

For more details on classes, check out our Warrior build guide in Dark Envoy.

As for combat, it features a more unique approach with tactical real-time combat instead of the classic turn-based module. While it has its pros in the sense that the game feels more alive and combat is fast-paced, it can also easily get overwhelming, and slowing down time all the time to keep up isn’t exactly fun.

In terms of graphics, the world of Dark Envoy is colorful, but also simple. Dungeons and enemies feel similar while maintaining many classic RPG designs such as knights, rangers, and frost golems. Overall, visually, the game lacks uniqueness, it definitely looks like many other RPGs you might have played before.

This might be fine, but unfortunately we have to take performance into consideration. I experienced significant FPS drops when picking up loot, opening my inventory, and interacting with NPCs. And these are major parts of the gameplay, so every minute or so my FPS dropped from 60 to 15. Sure, it was just for a few seconds, but quite annoying nonetheless.

As for the audio, despite its simplicity, it was catchy and uplifting. The music was fitting in most scenes and the characters were voice acted, which is always a nice touch; especially when there’s banter between them during adventures.

Dark Envoy has some interesting elements that might indeed capture RPG fans, such as starting character customization and a detailed class system, but falls short due to its lacking story and performance issues. The audio is a welcome addition that sweetens the deal a bit, but it’s still not enough to make this game worth recommending, at least until the performance issues are fixed.

Our review of Dark Envoy was made thanks to a Steam review key made available by Event Horizon. Dark Envoy is available on Steam and is planned to release on Xbox and PS5 in early 2024.